State of the Union Addresses of John Quincy Adams eBook

In closing this communication I trust that it will
not be deemed inappropriate to the occasion and purposes
upon which we are here assembled to indulge a momentary
retrospect, combining in a single glance the period
of our origin as a national confederation with that
of our present existence, at the precise interval of
half a century from each other. Since your last
meeting at this place the 50th anniversary of the
day when our independence was declared has been celebrated
throughout our land, and on that day, while every heart
was bounding with joy and every voice was tuned to
gratulation, amid the blessings of freedom and independence
which the sires of a former age had handed down to
their children, two of the principal actors in that
solemn scene—­the hand that penned the ever
memorable Declaration and the voice that sustained
it in debate—­were by one summons, at the
distance of 700 miles from each other, called before
the Judge of All to account for their deeds done upon
earth. They departed cheered by the benedictions
of their country, to whom they left the inheritance
of their fame and the memory of their bright example.

If we turn our thoughts to the condition of their
country, in the contrast of the first and last day
of that half century, how resplendent and sublime
is the transition from gloom to glory! Then,
glancing through the same lapse of time, in the condition
of the individuals we see the first day marked with
the fullness and vigor of youth, in the pledge of
their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor
to the cause of freedom and of man-kind; and on the
last, extended on the bed of death, with but sense
and sensibility left to breathe a last aspiration
to Heaven of blessing upon their country, may we not
humbly hope that to them too it was a pledge of transition
from gloom to glory, and that while their mortal vestments
were sinking into the clod of the valley their emancipated
spirits were ascending to the bosom of their God!

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

***

State of the Union Address
John Quincy Adams
December 4, 1827

Fellow Citizens of the Senate and of the House of
Representatives:

A revolution of the seasons has nearly been completed
since the representatives of the people and States
of this Union were last assembled at this place to
deliberate and to act upon the common important interests
of their constituents. In that interval the never
slumbering eye of a wise and beneficent Providence
has continued its guardian care over the welfare of
our beloved country; the blessing of health has continued
generally to prevail throughout the land; the blessing
of peace with our brethren of the human race has been
enjoyed without interruption; internal quiet has left
our fellow citizens in the full enjoyment of all their
rights and in the free exercise of all their faculties,
to pursue the impulse of their nature and the obligation